


The cold between stars

by vaguely_concerned



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Cuddling, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Introspection, Parent-Child Relationship, Set during episode 4 Sanctuary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:55:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21974677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaguely_concerned/pseuds/vaguely_concerned
Summary: A bit of bedtime routine during the stay on Sorgan! Mando has a lot of thinking to do, the baby is just happy to be here and getting to sleep on his dad's chest.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 353





	The cold between stars

Outside the barn the village had settled in for the night, only a few adults left around the main fire in the center to talk and drink a while before they turned in. It seemed a more subdued affair than most Mandalorian gatherings of the same sort, but Cara Dune’s occasional good-natured bark of laughter carrying over the others lent it a familiar air nonetheless. 

Listening to the faint hum of voices with half an ear Din finished reassembling the rifle after maintenance and made sure the safety was on before leaning it against the wall. There. He could go to sleep. 

On his way over to his low cot in the corner he checked on the crib and found the kid still sleeping, looking comfortably buried beneath the avalanche of blankets Omera had given them, only his face and one small three-fingered hand peeking out. Smiling a little Din finished getting ready for bed, sitting down on the edge of the cot once the last armor piece came off and giving the barn one last scan before he settled. He kept the helmet on — it was a bit cumbersome to sleep in it over such a long period of time, but the barn was too public a spot to chance that someone wouldn’t glance in at some point while he was out cold, even accidentally. Din didn’t mind it much; he’d slept in a lot of places exponentially worse. 

Everything seemed to be in order, so he lay back and pulled the blanket over him, closing his eyes.

After perhaps five minutes there was a tug on the blanket, followed by a soft, declarative sort of coo from around ground level. 

Din glanced down to the side of the bed, where the kid had managed to stretch up far enough to seize hold of the edge of the blanket and was watching him expectantly, dark eyes wide and unblinking. 

“You have your own bed,” Din pointed out, with no particular conviction behind it. “A nice one. And I’ll be right over here the entire time anyway.” 

The kid only kept up that solemn gaze, tiny fists clenched around their handfuls of blanket.

Din managed to hold out for exactly five seconds before he sighed and relented. “Yeah, okay, fine. C’mere.”

With a cheerful chirp the kid let himself be lifted up and immediately nestled against Din’s chest once he’d pulled the blanket up to cover the baby. 

At the end of the day the kid really didn’t ask for very much — certainly less than a human baby, from Din’s admittedly limited experience — and the thought of giving him even less than that seemed somehow gut-wrenching. Consequently the times he’d actually stayed in his crib the whole night through during their entire stay here could still be counted on one hand.

It was probably Din’s own damn fault too; on the ship the only way to make sure the kid didn’t run havoc around the place during the night was to keep him with him while he slept. Din had met professional cracksmen less adroit in getting past locked doors. It would be quite funny if it weren’t for the multitude of decidedly non-baby safe things on board — he’d never realized how much danger was to be found at about ankle-height around the Razor Crest before, but he was now building an extensive mental catalogue and had been frantically mitigating what he could. In a moment of mild paranoia one night he’d even removed the power cells from the carbonite equipment, just to be safe.

And so the kid seemed to have grown used to sleeping either curled up on Din’s chest or in his own seat up in the cockpit if Din was still awake— or occasionally, if he was tired enough, just nodding off on Din’s lap — and had treated any attempts to deviate from this way of things with frank and earnest incredulity, even when Omera had generously loaned them Winta’s old crib. 

...well, maybe Din had some other reasons to capitulate so readily tonight. If this happened to be his last night here he didn’t want the thing the kid remembered from it to be that Din had turned him away — that he hadn’t been wanted.

That wasn’t the problem here at all. 

From outside came the sound of laughter, pitched low to avoid waking the children. He could just pick out Omera’s warm chuckle from among the others, her voice clear and soft answering someone’s question. 

It felt like he was hearing it all from somewhere far away, as if long ago he’d left some important part of himself behind and now he was witnessing himself from the outside, like a stranger. 

He glanced over at the blaster lying ready on the overturned wooden wash tub he’d adopted as a nightstand and the armor left leaning against it within easy reach, a reflexive habit he hadn’t been able to shake even after months of nothing but calm. For all that having to sleep in the helmet could be tiresome there was a certain comforting familiarity to the confines of it too, a security that made him feel more grounded. 

The baby babbled happily to itself, legs kicking idly as it occasionally took a break to chew thoughtfully on the edge of the blanket. It finished speaking with a declarative sound, gesturing with one hand as if for emphasis, then turned its face up to ask for Din’s input. 

“That so?” Din said, faintly amused. “Huh. Never thought of it like that before.”

“ _Eh,_ ” the kid elucidated grandly.

“Sounds like you’ve got it figured out. I’ll defer to your expertise on this one, kid.”

Seeming satisfied with this response the baby went back to fiddling with the blanket, one ear squished nearly flat against Din’s chest at an angle he would have assumed to be uncomfortable but didn’t seem to bother it. Din smiled and shifted slightly so the child rested more securely against him. He knew for a fact he himself didn’t tend to move as much as a hair while he slept, but the kid would sometimes twitch around in unpredictable ways — Din had more than once been woken up by a small fist hitting him in the chin and a following contented baby snore. Better to be safe than sorry if the kid started squirming around. 

The kid still smelled like slightly marshy water from earlier that day — he had taken to bathing in the shallowest ponds with such assured and obvious joy that Din felt retroactively guilty that all he’d been able to offer was to splash around in the exceedingly tight confines of the sink on the Razor Crest. Having to clean his armor of pond water and the occasional flung krill afterwards seemed like a small price to pay. 

“This is a nice place, isn’t it?” he asked, tilting his head to look down at the kid. “A good place to grow up.” 

The kid’s ears perked up at the sound of Din’s voice, the little face turning towards him.

“You could play with Winta and the other kids every day,” Din said, stroking the edge of one long fuzzy ear with his thumb. “Wouldn’t that be good?”

After a while he added, not quite knowing why: “I used to play with a girl who was a few years older too, when I was around your age. Well. You know what I mean. Tried to feed me a live frog once, though I guess you’d be all for that, huh.” 

She’d died, of course, at the same time as all the others. He only remembered a half-faded unfinished sketch of her now — a vague impression of a shock of dark curly hair and long stick-thin legs he stumbled to keep up with and a certain flair for good-natured mischief. It’d been over half a lifetime since he last thought of her as she was in life, and not the glimpse he’d caught of her lying face down in the street before one of the Mandalorians had thought to shield his eyes until they were outside the town. Now it was like he could see her out of the corner of his eyes, the way she had been before, knees still scabbed from an exuberant chase through someone’s back garden, watching him placidly. 

Seeing the joy of this place had woken things he’d thought gone and buried long ago; he was a walking cemetery among them, haunted by the undemanding dead.

He startled a little as his vision was obscured by a small hand suddenly smacking down against the transparisteel of the helmet visor. The baby had crawled up to kneel against Din’s shoulder before standing, supporting himself with his hands on the helmet as he looked down at Din with his head tilted to one side. He made a quizzical sound and wobbled as his legs tried to contend with the shifting foothold.

Din snorted and gently picked the child from his precarious perch, placing him back on his chest instead. “No acrobatics. It’s time to sleep.”

The kid flailed and gave a squeak of indignant protest, but then settled quickly into magnanimity when Din patted his head. He wriggled himself more securely under the weight of Din’s hand resting on him before curling himself up for sleep.

“There you go,” Din murmured as the kid stilled and the sound of his breathing eventually became slower and deeper. “You sleep. I’ll keep an eye out.” 

Once he was sure the baby was asleep he let out a long breath and stared up at the ceiling, a few stars visible through gaps in the straw roof. 

He hadn’t quite decided _when_ to leave yet — something in him had shied away from putting it into stark specifics, instead couching it in malleable terms like ‘as soon as everything is stable again’ and ‘once the kid seems settled’. It would have to be soon, though. He was already pushing his luck, and more than that; he was gambling a bit more with the peacefulness of this village every day he stayed. News like a full suit of beskar armor traveled fast even in a backwater like this, and the last thing this place needed was more attention. 

Trying to figure out how much of it was staying to make sure this place truly was safe and how much was him dragging his heels was proving less comfortable than he’d hoped. 

Well, the kid did seem happier here than Din had ever seen him before. He shouldn’t have to spend his childhood hunted and sitting amidst ghosts, fighting to make room for himself between them. 

After weeks of wavering the decision finally broke over him like a cold, kindly numbing wave. Tomorrow. He’d take Omera aside and ask her tomorrow and then, if she agreed… he’d do the right thing and move on. 

He suppressed the shudder that wanted to run through him with the ease of long practice and the instinctive reluctance to move of anyone who has finally gotten a baby to sleep soundly. Beneath the chill calm there was still that flare of protest at the idea somewhere behind his breastbone, a visceral feeling of _wrongness_ he otherwise associated with a dislocated limb or other substantial injury. 

_This is not about you_ , he told himself yet again. _What you want is not important here, all that matters is that the kid is safe and happy and this is the best shot at that. This was always the plan._

_Ah, so you’re not running away because you’re scared, then_ , another part of him answered sardonically, entirely unbidden. _Good to know_. 

Din sighed and softly thumped the back of his head against the straw pillow, the metal giving it a hollow sound. 

He’d burned every bridge with the guild and then some, but there were still jobs out there if you knew where to look and weren’t picky. Most of all there wasn’t much need to be discreet — the best thing he could do for the kid was to draw the heat away from him, catch the attention of anyone who might still be looking for him for as long as possible, and keep an ear to the ground through it all just in case. All things he actually knew how to do, as opposed to anything to do with raising a child. You do the work you’re suited for. 

Omera had been kind about this, as she’d been about everything. She’d dropped a hundred hints that the kid would be welcome here, sweetly firm about it in the face of Din’s awkwardness and inability to stay with it for more than a few seconds at a time. He hoped he’d at least managed to convey his helpless fumbling gratitude in a way that she could understand.

He didn’t know what to do with the feeling that her invitation was meant for them both. 

( _I nearly pulled a blaster on your daughter because she startled me_ , he wanted to tell her. _How could you still think someone like me could stay somewhere like this?_ She seemed to mean it sincerely, which confused him. More baffling still, he sometimes found himself wanting to believe her. He better get the hell away while he still had his head screwed on straight; he’d already pulled enough wild life-upending stunts for one year. He shouldn’t drag anyone else down with him, surely forcing the tribe to relocate from the relative safety they’d found on Nevarro way before anyone had planned to was bad enough.) 

That same inconvenient inner voice spoke up once more, almost shattering the strange distant tranquility of his new resolve. _You already walked away from him once. Would he forgive you again this time? Will you?_

Din closed his eyes for a moment.

The kid smacked his lips in his sleep and curled and uncurled his fingers in the fabric of Din’s undershirt. 

“You’re strong,” Din told him, quietly so he wouldn’t wake him, and pulled the blanket up to cover him better. “You’ll survive it. And then you’ll be safe and have a family and a shot at a good life. That’s all that matters. I’ll keep looking out for you from out there until the day I'm gone.”

The baby sighed, burrowing a little against Din’s chest as if for warmth.

Din swallowed and cleared his throat, resting his hand on the kid’s back like it could shelter him from the cold while he lifted his eyes back to the stars.

**Author's Note:**

> I literally never thought I would say this but thank GOD for that bounty hunter pointing his gun at Baby Yoda, I'm not sure my heart could have survived Mando leaving and being alone again. :( Anyway I love this show so much, finally the excellent space western I have been waiting for haha
> 
> [If you want to you can find me over here on tumblr regularly losing MY ENTIRE MIND over this green baby and his space cowboy dad!](https://vaguely-concerned.tumblr.com/)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The cold between stars [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24988366) by [blackglass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackglass/pseuds/blackglass)




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